Last week, Apple CEO Tim Cook revealed that the company bought $14 billion of its own shares in two weeks and has new products in the pipeline. ISS, which rates shareholder proposals, said on Sunday that it wouldn't support an Icahn proposal calling for more share buybacks.

On Monday, Icahn backed down. In a letter to Apple shareholders, Icahn said he was disappointed that ISS wouldn't support him, but did acknowledge that the company's buyback altered the appeal of a proposal urging Apple to buy at least $32 billion worth of shares in 2014.

As Tim Cook describes them, these recent actions taken by the company to repurchase shares have been both “opportunistic” and “aggressive” and we are supportive. In light of these actions, and ISS’s recommendation, we see no reason to persist with our non-binding proposal, especially when the company is already so close to fulfilling our requested repurchase target.

Furthermore, in light of Tim Cook’s confirmed plan to launch new products in new categories this year (in addition to an exciting product roadmap with respect to new products in existing categories), we are extremely excited about Apple’s future.

Add it up and Apple appears to have rid itself of the Icahn distraction---at least for now. If Icahn occupied more than a few hours of Cook's time it's probably too much.

Larry Dignan is Editor in Chief of ZDNet and SmartPlanet as well as Editorial Director of ZDNet's sister site TechRepublic. He was most recently Executive Editor of News and Blogs at ZDNet. Prior to that he was executive news editor at eWeek and news editor at Baseline. He also served as the East Coast news editor and finance editor at CN...
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